


0xygen

by milk_conspirator



Category: 0xygen
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:09:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milk_conspirator/pseuds/milk_conspirator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about Lanna, a girl who lives millions of years in the future in the ring, the humans last home. In this story powers are sold called drinks and are used by literally everyone.  . I made this up so this is not a fanfiction really I just needed somewhere to post this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Intro:

What an ironic title.  
The first page I’m already begging for air.  
Well not on the outside.  
On the outside I’m lifeless. Well not yet. I’m loopy though. The lowering levels of oxygen and the gaining levels of carbon dioxide are slowly killing me. At least I have something to breathe at all. I would much rather breathe carbon dioxide than have nothing to breathe, suffocating in space, floating with nothing to grasp.  
Finally I have hope. An anchor roughly attaches to my back plugin. Air pulses through it. You can see the red glow come down it and into my back. They do that to show there’s actually something coming to you. I look further down the anchor and see a big floating ring with a ball in the center. Not some tiny ring. A fucking huge one. One you wouldn’t want to give to your girlfriend because it’s big enough to hold three small cities inside. Oh wait. It does.  
The large ring has little sticks jutting off it. The solar panels give us energy. And were running out. You might ask, “How can you run out of solar energy?” Well, were actually running out of star. The reason I say star is because the sun is long gone and very far away, and most likely in pieces.  
A small silver ball with glowing blue lines on it comes up to me. It has a scratchy voice. Not like I can hear it. The lack of air outside prevents its horribly annoying voice to get into my suit. Thank god. Finally I hear the loud beep in my suit notifying me of the audio connection the sphere has made. I quickly turn down the suits volume before my ears explode.  
“Life anchor connected. The fee is 25 credits. An additional 5 per hour.”  
“Options” I screech back at it. My suit microphone has been shitty lately.  
“Loading options…” the robot says. The interface has been not so well lately. If you think about it, everything has been absolute crap. “Today you have the following options: return to the work shuttle, request tools, emergency services, and phonebook.”  
“Return to shuttle and phonebook you shit robot” cursing at the robots helps me sometimes. After the request, my anchor immediately jerks towards the work station. After a few seconds a screen pops up in front of me. I scroll down till I see the name of the shithead that left me floating out here in the first place. Clay. It rings for twelve seconds. Too long for me if you ask. Shithead picks up.  
“Hello?”  
“Man I don’t like being alive that much but I’ll kill myself on my own accord okay?”  
“Haha, listen Lanna, get back here the council is about to talk about where were going to move the city. Hurry up and get here” he says. You can hear him messing with some fabric and is most likely getting dressed for the occasion which is odd because it doesn’t star for another hour.  
“The meeting isn’t until four. Why are you getting dressed? And why are you dodging the subject that you left me floating?” my tone is getting harsh. Clay doesn’t always understand how things work. Some weird mental handicap. One that I forgot the name of years ago.  
“Lanna I’m going out early to get lunch. You should join me! I hear that Starr’s has a new drink that helps you see further!”  
“Clay you shithead why would I want to see further?” I say expecting some dumb repl. Here it comes  
“Too see the council better! The drink is half priced for the occasion!”  
“You know there’s going to be monitors of the council everywhere. I could pull up a live feed of them setting up right now.” I contemplate doing that right now. But then again, why would I even want to do that? I could hear everything they say on a recording later. Or I could just read it in the news tomorrow. These days you have no excuse for missing anything. “Listen Clay I’m hanging up. I’ll try and make it to the meeting on time ok?”  
“See ya!” He is way too cheerful. I don’t know how he doesn’t worry about the current events. I don’t even know how he let me float away like that without even worrying about my safety! I should tell the foreman about is actions. But then again, he’s like a brother to me.

Chapter 1

Starr’s has been the number one go to drink stop. Except these days drinks aren’t what you think they are. Drink is a chemical that pumps through your suit and into your body. The drink Clay was talking about, I found out, is called SeeFarr. Most drinks have shitty titles with double letters. As the anchor pulls me back to the work station I look at my wrist. There are three small tubes, two of them empty. The far right tube has a glowing dark blue liquid in it. I recently bought the drink Callm. When activated it, like the title implies, calms me down. Most drinks are like that or shitty gimmicks like SeeFarr. Drinks can be expensive. Unless you have a RRecycleGauntlet. A RRecycleGuantlet takes the drink literally out of your blood stream and cleans it. So you don’t have to buy more, thank god. But the gauntlet is so fucking expensive. Especially if you have to pay fucking anchor fees like I currently am.  
“Five credits paid for extra hour” shit.  
“How am I supposed to earn money if my own job costs money?” I shout back at the invisible voice. My job is to go out of the city to mine asteroids. But the shitheads who run the operation decide that they should make workers’ pay for oxygen to save money. This puts a dent of fifty credits in my seventy five credit salary. Leaving me with 15 credits a day. I have been saving up for a gauntlet and this drink called SteelLuungs. Letting me hold my breath for up to three hours. Buying these will cost me 450 credits. This will take forever considering how I have to pay for food, water, and my room. I’m hoping to get a promotion to an ice miner. Miners go down to a nearby ice planet and mine ice. The ice is melted and filtered for those expensive water bottles rich people buy since they obviously can’t have regular recycled pee water. Snobs.  
Finally the anchor jerks to a stop. Leaving me just outside the work station. I enter the airlock and slide my workers card onto the slit in the wall. There’s a green light of approval and the outside entry door shuts. The small room is filled with breathable air. I take off my helmet and my suit and then reattach my gauntlet. As I walk up to the shuttle to get a ride back to my room to change out of my work clothes, a worker also walks up to the shuttle doors. He looks about as done with work as I did, I don’t strike up a conversation because of how tired I am. The doors finally slid open revealing a small tube shaped room with two women and one man inside. They all stand up and walk into the work station dispatch room, preparing to go out into the dark abyss of space. The man and I step in and we both sit down. The doors slid closed and the shuttle starts to move through the tube trail that winds throughout the city.i look through the windows and I saw some people eating lunch at a small restaurant. The lunch place has dozens of fake trees and other plants out on its fake patio. Suddenly she shuttle gets dark. The tube is no longer made of glass at this point, leaving the shuttle windows useless. You hear the shuttle come to a stop and the doors open. This is my stop. I get out and step into a hallway. There are lamps on the wall every 5 feet and I start walking down the left side of the hall. I count up the numbers. 157, 158, 159, 160. Until I reach 168. I unlock the door with my ID card and change out of my work clothes after walking to my closet. The room is very small. Once you walk in, you see a couch that folds out into a bed, a small coffee table, a chair, and a small kitchen. After I changed, I went to sleep on the couch for the remaining 30 minutes I had before it was time to leave.  
I walk down the street. You can almost tell that were inside a giant ring shaped space station by how the row barely curves upwards. The ground is made of tan bricks. To my right is a bench, a couple sits on it. To my left is some restaurant. The only kind of store that you’ll find here is a food store. Everything is digital. You can download books, games, shows, and movies, anything you want. And if you want something you can just have it shipped. I mean how long is it going to take to get a small vile of maybe some spaark or something. I’m usually not this descriptive but I just used some callm. I pull up my left sleeve and look at my arm. You can see my veins pulsing with dark blue glowing blood. I remember the first time I used a drink. It was when I was twelve. Only three years ago, I got my first gauntlet. it was from my parents. It was the day I was moving out to the other side of the ring for work. They spent so much money on me. Not like they were spoiling me or anything. They just loved me. They didn’t want to see me leave sad. I remember putting the gauntlet on. It was basically a slim silver glove with three short tubes going vertically up my wrist. I expected the tubes to get in the way while moving at all. But they didn’t. The glove fit perfectly. They gave me two small viles. One was the starter. It prepared your body for the long life ahead of constantly having my body injected with chemicals. I slipped it in the first tube. The second was gooddguess, a drink that heightened your ability to observe and instantly let you make educated guesses. Mostly used in casinos, but my parents gave it to me so I could instantly make friends at work. I could look at them and know which topics were touchy for them. I used it all on the first day. I pressed the small yellowish-greenish button under the starter. This was the scariest thing that had happened to me at the time. I felt two small pointy things poke my arm. I looked down and my veins glowed yellow. My heartbeat only got louder and louder. Faster too. I started shaking. Fast. I felt the need to hurt things. I wanted to punch something. I found the couch and just looked at the pillow. I couldn’t. It was too hard I couldn’t bear it. Then I looked at my hand small sparks came out of my fingertips. Then small embers. I touched the wall and a small blue line came from my finger and went up the wall. I too my hand off and the blue line faded. After a few minutes I was feeling normal again. At the time I didn’t know that my body literally used every drink at once. But so many have come out since then most people don’t even use the starter. Then my mom tells me I can use good guess. After I take out the empty starter I press the button under the second tube. This time it just hurts a little. My dad tells me the starter also protects the skin where the needles go in so repeated use is not dangerous. I look at my arm. My veins are pink, just like the slowly emptying vile on my wrist. That was when the scariest thing happened, easily surpassing my recent starter drink fiasco. I looked at my mother. She commented about how my eyes were glowing pink. I couldn’t respond. I was looking at every detail in the room. The couch had small frays. I counted them in a second. 15536 (we had a shitty couch).then my mind quickly forgot that to make room for new, more important information. I look at my dad. I see his ring. I notice it’s been frequently taken off. His pants button is worn from being taken off. I could go in to detail but my brain forgot all the other details. It told me something. He was cheating on mom. But all I could do was smile. I couldn’t react. The drink was still in use. I slam my eyes shut and manage to press the second button on my wrist. The gauntlet shot a chemical in to stop the drink. I took a breath. I was crying. But I forced a smile. I wanted them to think I was thankful. But I was devastated on the inside.


	2. Chapter 2

I finally made it to the council meeting. I hadn’t bothered to buy seefarr but I don’t think Clay will be devastated. I walk in the two large doors and there are lines to get into the main auditorium. I get in line and begin my long wait for a seat. As I wait I look at my gauntlet. I hold it up in front of me as if I was reading watch. I press a blue button that is under the three drink activators and it pulls up a screen in front of me. I use my index finger to scroll down to contacts and then to Clay’s name. My gauntlet is an older model so I can’t feel the screen. New one use hard light technology but mine it just feels like you’re moving your finger in the air. I call Clay and after 13 seconds of ringing he picks up.  
“Hey Lanna.” A large line on my screen creates a waveform to the sound of his voice.  
“Hey are you in the line?”  
“No I have a seat already.”  
“Do you have one for me?”  
“Yeah. Come on down” Clay sounds bored of his current situation. Soon I will be there to fix that. I squeeze past the other people in line as they complain at me. I lie and tell them I just went to the bathroom, and that I already had a seat. Finally, I meet Clay’s smiling shit face. Instantly my anger at him is gone. You can’t stay mad at him. I walk a little down the row excusing myself to the people I have to step over. I plop down to the seat and take a deep breath. Before I could strike a conversation, the two giant tubes on both sides of the stage fill with lightning. The people still in line at the back of the room start hustling to get a seat in these few seconds left before the meeting starts. I don’t know exactly why there was lightning tubes, but I can tell you one thing, Clay fucking liked ‘em. The curtains raised to reveal two long rows of podiums, the row in the back was elevated. Council member started making their way from the side of the stage to their assigned spots. A member on the first row stayed standing as the others sat down. All of them were dressed in casual day clothes. Humanity gave up on dressing nice for things because we didn’t have enough materials to spare. The council member that was standing spoke  
“Today we are here to speak about the relocation of the ring. Starting today we will charge our propulsion systems to make our way the moment we decide where to move.” He pulled a remote out of his pocket clumsily, and then pressed a button on it. A hologram of the ring showed up and then zoomed out. A marker popped up to show the position of the ring. Then three more popped up to show the positions of available stars we could orbit with at least one ice planet, and plenty of asteroids for mining. Each of the planet markers expanded and showed each star in detail. Each picture had a box above it. “Begin the voting.” In front of each of the council members came a screen. All of the council members were extremely smart. Some were mathematicians, others were scientists, and some were just so fucking smart they didn’t have a title for their job. Each voted based on the extensive research they have done on each planet. X-8846 got 4 votes. X-8237 got 5. That left X-8888 with the remaining 11. The head researcher on star X-8888 stood up and came to the center of the stage.  
“X-8888 is my favorite star because of the beautiful ice planets. That’s right you heard me right folks. Planets, plural. With these extra planets we will be able to have more jobs available for the community, and more of your favorite imported water. We have also proposed a plan to not recycle oxygen, but evaporate the ice for the oxygen in it. The ring will be humid for a couple of days, but we are working on a asteroid size hydrogen extractor which will be floating off of the ring providing free oxygen using the energy of our new beautiful blue sun. I hope project infinity works out great!” he held his hands high in the air while the crowd cheered. The hologram in the center changed to X-8888. Then the x and the hyphen disappeared leaving only the four eights. They all formed into one large eight and it turned sideways revealing the symbol of infinity. Over the speakers came a voice. A cheery one. Instantly recognizable   
“Stay in your seats folks! Starr Industries is about to reveal new drinks next!” the crowed exploded with cheering. Drinks were fucking huge. And now they were about to get bigger. Clay and I sat in anticipation. Clay was practically vibrating in his seat. I looked back and not a single person was making their way out. Everyone was waiting in anticipation. I guess the stage manager realized that and told Starr to hurry up. He walked out on the stage looking as magnificent as a person could these days. He was standing with his neck extended is far as I could. His shoulders forced back. His back so straight o could use it as a table. But somehow it all looked natural. He waited several minutes for the crowd to die down. Finally he started.  
“Welcome to the fifteenth annual new drink reveal! This year we have a practical drink and a drink for all you little pranksters out there!” a man with a gauntlet walked out on stage. Well I mean everyone is wearing one. But you know. Sometimes people forget there even there. Starr gave him a small drink vile full of glowing purple liquid. While the man loaded it into his gauntlet Starr spoke. “This man is about to use our newest drink find! This drink will be very helpful for those who lose items often. The drink allows you to see from the perspective of anything, letting you get a hint on where the item might be. Lewis, please give them a demonstration.” All eyes went to Lewis, whoever he was. He pressed the button to activate the drink. His veins glowed purple. His eyes did too, and also a large purple spot on his forehead began to form. Starr held up a purse that he, just moments ago, asked a woman to give him. The dot on Lewis’s forehead began to float to the purse. Starr then asked Lewis to close his eyes. He did. Then he asked Lewis to say how many fingers he was holding in front of the purse. Lewis said four with assurance. He was correct. The crowd roared with cheers. Then Starr brought out the second drink. He then told the crowd it was called “jinxx”. The drink gave the user to cause anything to go wrong at any time. The following scenes were, Lewis slipping, Lewis falling off stage, Lewis’s pants to fall, and finally, Lewis having a stage light fall inches away from him. They had to stop after that because they were almost out of drink.  
Later the evening I walked home empty handed because of my money situation. Clay, living with his parents, rich parents, bought four viles of each drink. That nigh I slept so well. The first good night sleep in a while. Something had been keeping me awake. Some sort of fear. Something I felt, was going to happen. I don’t know if it was bad or good. But it was something.


	3. Chapter 3 Intro

Humanity hasn’t seen lightning in a long time. Most know what it looks like. Less know the sound it creates. Even less know why it’s caused. But then, sometimes, when you see something, you’re not surprised. Seeing the lightning reminds you instantly what those worthless hours of school taught you. Lightning is cause by the friction in the air. Well, that’s just a dumbed down version. But as I look out my window, I realize that, how is there air in space? The trail moves slow to the station. Almost too slow. I can’t see what’s at the end of it but it’s slower than what I’m guessing lightning should be. I’m watching it slowly trail to the ring. But because of how the ring slowly turns, I am longer able to see the lightning.to be careful, I put on my suit and step into the hall. I make sure my long hair is inside the suit and not getting caught by the helmet. People walking down the hall give me weird looks as I hold onto the railing, bracing for impact.


	4. Slow Lightning

People are starting to come out of their rooms wearing their suits looking panicked. Well, I can only assume. I can’t see their faces. I run down the hall with my hand gripping to the railing in the hall. As I get further and further, more and more people look more and more unaware of the ring’s current situation. I plan to make my way to a shuttle. Since the shuttles travel from inside the ring to the outside, they have their own air supply. If a can make it inside, I will definitely increase my chance of survival. I look at my right wrist. I have enough Callm to help me get through this. If I use it, it could make me calm enough to make some rational decisions, or, I might end up being too calm to make any decisions at all. I press the button for Callm, but before it fan dispense all of the liquid into my body, I quickly rip out the small tube, flinging dark blue liquid around in the hall. There goes my right tube, only allowing me to use the two left tubes from now on. My body went on running, while my mind slowed. I was noticing all the routes I could take. I took a left down the hall and sped past people. On the right of the hall was a large window, letting anyone look out into the main area or the ring, which was now glowing red with flashing lights of alarm. It took a few seconds the hall started flashing in the same fashion. The only people not aware of the Ring’s current situation were probably very heavy sleepers. The window stops and there is a door at the end of the hall. I run into the room behind the door with my work ID in my hand ready to enter a shuttle. I enter and quickly buckle into the shuttle and wait for some violent shaking. It doesn’t come. The only shaking is on my gauntlet. Press the blue button to answer the call. It’s Clay.   
“Lanna! I’ve sent ten thousand credits to your account for oxygen! You need to make it out alive!” I look closely at the video feed of Clay. I can see out the window and the lightning is too close to his room. We both know he’s not going to make it. You can see tears streaming down his eyes. You can hear his parents his parents screaming to exit the room there in. Clay and I both know that they won’t make it. I’m crying now. At this moment I realized that I knew nothing about Clay. Why did his parents have money? Well, I have it now. So I don’t think it matters anymore. The shuttle has been going down the track for a few minutes. I’m getting close to where the shuttle enters the airlock, and escapes to the open world of space. I take I final glimpse in the ring. All the people running, screaming, some are just standing. You can see some of the people forming groups. Leaders forming. Then, two metal teeth clench down in front of me. I’m in the airlock. Everyone inside is considered dead to me now. The doors on the other side open to the dark of space. The shuttle clicks down to the work station. Floating near some asteroids that have been hollowed out. None of them had anything valuable. It had been a shitty quarter. I would say we could do better next quarter, but no one will be here.my gauntlet beeps twice. The Callm is almost gone. I open a small flap below my gantlet revealing a small window to my wrist. You can see the dark purple returning to my original color. My dark skin back to its original chocolate color. Or at least that’s what my parents call it. You would think that racism would have stopped this far in time. Humans joining together to work for the greater good. Lies. I’ve worked mining for three years and the normal people have been living it up in retail stores in the ring. The shuttle halts. I’m at the work station now. I unbuckle and stand up while holding on to the railing on the ceiling. I’m going to miss gravity while I’m gone. Maybe I will get to experience it again, or maybe even make contact to another human. I then lunge past the water droplets that are floating in the shuttle and into the work station. Those tears will be my last. I must be strong if I want to survive. But first I need a plan. I look out the window to see a exploding ring. And as the fire clears, I see a light. A blue light. One only the shining ice planet could produce. If my plan works I will feel the great power of gravity once more.


End file.
